


Crack in the Mirror

by SerStolas



Series: Heart, Blood, and Blasters [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars the Old Republic - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Internal Monologue, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 15:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9553877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerStolas/pseuds/SerStolas
Summary: After her conversation with Mako on if Torian would be interested in the slicer, Kandakke Lok deals with some unpleasant thoughts and jealousy, then finds perhaps she wasn't so wrong after all.





	

Kandakke took a deep breath and stared at herself in the tarnished mirror in the fresher, the only mirror actually installed on board anywhere on her ship. She suspected Gault had a pocket mirror at least, and for all she knew Torian might have a sliver of one for shaving, but that was it.

When they’d first stolen the ship, the captain’s quarters had a large mirror on one wall. She’d grabbed a crowbar and pried it off the wall then given it to Mako to do with what the girl preferred. Mako had taken in the look in her friend’s eyes and the mirror had never been seen again.

Kandakke Lok was not fond of her own reflection.

So staring at it now in the mirror, she ran her fingers along the three long scars that ran from temple to chin on the left side of her face, fingers brushing against the warm metal of her eye implant. 

She’d been sixteen and on Nar Shada, just before Braeden found her. What little Kandakke knew of her family was that her mother had been Chiss and her father had probably been human. Her parents had both been killed in some bizarre accident when she was three and she’d been raised by a Chiss man from the Ascendency. No one ever hid the fact that she didn’t meet the Ascendency’s expectations for her, and at fifteen she’d bolted after she’d failed yet another series of training exercises that failed to mold her into a proper Chiss.

Credits got her as far as Nar Shada, but after that she was stuck. She did retain her skill with a blaster that her adoptive “father” taught her, and ended up running with a gang for close to six months, but their lack of honor and habit of making civilians targets disgusted her. A confrontation with the Gang’s leader ended up with her on the wrong end of some mutant animal’s claws, resulting in the scars and the loss of her eye.

Braeden never told her how exactly how much he’d seen of the confrontation, but she knew he’d seen her kill at least two of her attackers and critically injure a third before they took her down by sheer force of numbers. He’d recovered her body after the gang dumped her, and with some help from an old friend, had her taken care of.

The cost of a cybernetic eye had been far beyond their means, so they’d installed a metal plate over where the eye would have been, and some additional internal cybernetics to help with the damage to her hearing. When she’d recovered, he’d taught her to hunt. The day Tarro Blood’s goons had killed him, she’d mourned as fiercely as Mako, though the other girl didn’t know how well Kandakke had known Braeden.

She tapped her fingers on the metal plate where her eye should be. With winning the Great Hunt and the Black List bounty she’d taken, she had more than enough credits to replace the plate with an actual cybernetic eye, but she’d resolved to keep the plate as a reminder of her past.

“You kriffing idiot,” she murmured to herself. Most days she never even looked in the mirror, she just swept her Chiss blue hair into a pony tail and left. Today though, she took a good, long look at her own reflection.

She shouldn’t have let Mako’s questions get to her so. The other woman had an honest interest in Torian, but something about her asking Kandakke if the bounty hunter thought Torian would be interested in the slicer had irked her. She felt jealousy, and she didn’t like the emotion.  
Mako had as many or more implants as Kandakke, but none of them marred the sooth complexion of her face the way Kandakke’s scars and implants did. Mako was a pretty girl, and it wouldn’t be a stretch for a young man to be interested in her.

Thing was, for the first time since she was eighteen, Kandakke found she really liked Torian, as more than just a comrade. The man was a deadly shot and quick on the uptake. She knew he had her six any time they went out, and she respected his sense of honor. She’d flirted, somewhat clumsily, with him, and he’d seemed intrigued. So Mako asking her if she thought the slicker had a chance at Torian’s affections…it rubbed her the wrong way. 

She really didn’t know where in his interest either of them might lay right now, but she’d lied and told Mako she didn’t think so. He watched Mako, sometimes around the ship, though Kandakke liked to think he watched her more.

“You’re flattering yourself,” she muttered under her breath. Torian watched everyone. He sized everyone on the ship up for strengths and weaknesses; it was his way…it was the Mandaloran way.

She breathed in and out once, drawing her eyes away from the scarred reflection. It didn’t matter what she looked like. She was Mandaloran, adopted by Mandalore himself into clan Lok: not for her appearance, but for her skills and her honor. And she had seen some of the warriors looking curiously interested at her at the party after her adoption. When one or two of them spoke individually to her, they seemed more interested in her deeds than her appearance.

It wasn’t a bad way to look at life. But someone being easily on the eyes didn’t hurt either. And Torian was very easily on her eyes.

“Stop it,” she told herself. She had no claim on Torian’s affections right now, they weren’t dating, and she should probably apologize for being jealous to Mako. 

Though she’d noticed Mandalorans didn’t play around. Perhaps it might be better if she just told Torian she was interested in him, flat out.

She brushed steam off the mirror from the shower and then checked her clothing and left the fresher; that thought in mind, though she might have to work on her timing.

She went back to her room and donned her armor before she moved towards the kitchenette, thinking she felt almost naked with armor these days.

“Kandakke, you have a movement?” She heard Torian call as she moved past the stairs. Curious, she walked down to the lower level of the ship and found Torian in the cargo hold, cleaning his weapons.

“What can I do for you, Torian?” Kandakke asked.

“You seeing anyone?” he asked, glancing up from his weaponry.

Well, that was blunt, and just want she had been considering herself. She smiled. “No, but I could be convinced to, by the right guy. My turn. You seeing anyone?”

He smiled at her. “No, but I could be convinced to, by the right woman.”

Maybe her answer to Mako’s question hadn’t been a lie after all.


End file.
